Dissapointed with Vegas Movie Studio Platinum

[Mark0514]

Hi guys,

I just started recording videos at church with a nice HD camcorder. So, for father's day I asked for and got Sony Vegas Movie Studio Platinum ($90 I think). I love the editing features, but when I go to render a video that is 10 minutes long, it says it will take four hours. All the settings, processor speed and RAM aside, Windows movie maker will publish the same size, bit rate, etc. video in about 30 minutes. What is the deal with this program? I am ready to trash it and hate the thought of explaining to my wife that maybe I didnt do my homework. Is premiere elements any better? Help me out here...

[zactommo]

What format are you recording in? Frame rate, resolution, and compression settings?
And then, what format is your timeline in, and what format are you trying to output to?

All these settings need to be the same if you want fast rendering.

Because movie maker doesn't give you any choice, you can't really stuff it up, but with more features, comes more choice, and more change of doing the wrong thing.

[Mark0514]

We're using an HD camcorder that leaves us with an AVCHD .mts file. I can pull that into movie studio and I believe it's 1440 x 1080 (not home right now). Whatever it is, I set the timeline properties to match it.

I am trying to render a wmv at 1280 x 720, at 6Mbps. Note that I have tried various resolutions, bit rates, file types, etc.

Windows movie maker on my vista machine wont recognize the .mts, so I am converting it to a HD .wmv before pulling it in. This process is time consuming, but still a lot quicker to do that and render with WMM than pull the raw file into Vega MS...especially since I can batch convert and start working on one file while the rest are converting. Interestingly enough, my Windows 7 laptop recognizes the .mts files. Thanks

[zactommo]

Try rendering in Vegas using something close to the AVCHD format, like an MPEG-4 or the like, and make sure the frame size is the same as the original files (1440x1080) and the bit-rate is the same, then the render should be a lot quicker in vegas.

[MediaGuy]

AVCHD (.mts) is a very good, but highly compressed, format for HD video... But it is also very specialized. I know you want to set aside your hardware in the discussion, but you can't. So...

If you don't have a good video card (graphics processing unit or GPU), the program must use the computer's CPU and memory to decompress, display, and render every frame. That's a whole heckofalot to ask from your computer. Vegas (and I assume Vegas Studio) is designed to put all of that processing onto the specialized power of your graphics card, if it can. It eats my macbook pro for lunch, and is flat-out unbearable on my PC at home.

If your computer has the video connection that is built in to the motherboard, there's a good chance you'll likely never be able to work with AVCHD happily.

[Mark0514]

All that video on a little card is pretty amazing. I havent had a lot of proplems trimming the videos, etc...just rendering.

I found a freeware program from Koyotesoft to convert the AVCHD. From their site - "This freeware will let you convert your HD files from your camcorder easily to AVI, MPEG2, DVD format, Ipod, Mp4, Wmv format."

Although this takes some time, it seems the decompression helps. I only want to render 720p anyway, so we'll see. Thanks

[Mark0514]

After coverting it to a 1280x720 WMV with the above mentioned program, I was able to edit it and render a 12 minute wmv that is 1280x720 @ 6mbps 30 fps w/ audio at 192kbps...in an hour and a half. Roughly an hour longer that windows movie maker would take.

[cmchamp]

What Camera are you using, and have you downloaded the camera manufacturer's converter/decompressor? I know Panasonic has their own.

[hoosierdraft]

Originally Posted by MediaGuy

If you don't have a good video card (graphics processing unit or GPU), the program must use the computer's CPU and memory to decompress, display, and render every frame. That's a whole heckofalot to ask from your computer. Vegas (and I assume Vegas Studio) is designed to put all of that processing onto the specialized power of your graphics card, if it can.

While this statement might be true for other NLEs, it is not correct for Vegas. Vegas does not use any GPU cycles for rendering, strictly CPU cycles. What CPU is your computer using?

[MediaGuy]

Originally Posted by hoosierdraft

While this statement might be true for other NLEs, it is not correct for Vegas. Vegas does not use any GPU cycles for rendering, strictly CPU cycles. What CPU is your computer using?

...I tuck my tail and whine, hoosier. You are right, with just one bit of searching. After all this time, I was under the wrong impression that Vegas was growing with the other NLEs. While it's still my favorite over Premiere or Final Cut, Sadly I am still on Vegas 7.

[Mark0514]

The camera is a Canon Vixia HF S100.

[423youin]

I have a JVC Everio HD300 (AVCHD) camcorder,i am annoyed with the MTS files, for they counldn't be edit on Adobe Premiere but now i found out a fastest and easiest way to solve it-just use a professional MTS Video converter which can convert MTS to wmv, mov, mp4, avi, etc. without any problem.The Pavtube MTS Converter software to do a decent job. I've had good results converting the .mts files to .mov, with the settings h.264, 1200kbps, 1280*720, 25fps, aac. The files look good on my PC.